John Norman - Gor 11 Read online

  Melina, her shoulders bared, stood before him, wearing a sleen collar. It had, sewn in its side, a heavy ring, to which a sleen leash might be attached.

  Instantly she was stripped and thrown to the ground. She looked up in fear at Thurnus.

  "Into the cage, Slave," said Thurnus.

  "Thurnus!" she cried.

  He crouched down and, with the back of his hand, struck her across the mouth, leaving blood across the side of her face.

  "Into the cage, Slave," he said.

  "Yes-Master," whispered Melina. She crawled into the cage. At a gesture from Thurnus, Sandal Thong, surrendering the sleen leashes to a man, who took the animals from the clearing, came to the cage and, with two hands, flung down the metal gate to the cage, locking her former mistress within. There was a cheer from those about.

  "Let there be a feast!" called Thurnus, caste leader of Tabuk's Ford. "And in the feast fires let an iron be heated for slave branding!"

  There was another cheer.

  In the tiny cage she who had been Melina crouched down, sleen-collared, her face miserable behind the bars, clutching them with her fists.

  She would soon wear the mark of a slave in her flesh.

  Men and women hurried about, to prepare the feast. At a gesture from Thurnus Radish, Turnip and Verr Tail ungagged me and freed me from the heavy stock. They helped me from the stock and I, by its head, sank down to the dirt. I could scarcely move. I could still taste the heavy, coarse, sour wadding of the gag in my mouth. I would not have believed so effective a gag was possible. At that time, however, I had not worn the Gorean slave hood with gag-attachment.

  Verr was roasted, and puddings made. Sa-Tarna bread was brought forth and heated. Sul paga poured freely.

  Atthe height of the festivities the cage was opened and its occupant, a former free woman, whose name had been Melina, now a naked slave in sleen collar, was ordered forth on her hands and knees. A sleen leash was attached to her collar and she was marched, as a she-sleen, crawling, abused, to the rape-rack in which I had been earlier confined. Therein she was fastened, the beams locking her ankles and neck, and wrists, in place, and, as her left thigh was held by strong men, branded by the hand of Thurnus, caste leader of the village of Tabuk's Ford. She screamed wildly, branded, and, her thigh released, cleanly marked, moaned and twisted on the wood. Her head was then shaved. Then she wept, her head back, softly moaning, held in place by the heavy beams, forgotten, as men and women returned to their feasting.

  At Thurnus's right hand sat Tup Ladletender. On Thurnus's left sat the free woman, Sandal Thong, whom he had earlier this afternoon freed. She, with the two sleen, had boldly aided him in circumventing the concerted attack of Bran Loort's cohorts when they had been individually bested. The feast was served by the village slave girls, Radish, Verr Tail and Turnip among them. I was not forced to serve. I lay near the rack on which the newly branded slave lay secured. After a time she was quiet. I could not conjecture the nature of her thoughts. It did not matter. They could only be those of a slave. She the proud, former mistress, was now no more than I, only another slave, at the full mercy of men.

  She was now no more than I, nothing.

  I looked upward, and saw dark clouds in the sky, racing across the faces of the moons.

  There was a sense of moisture in the air.

  This pleased me.

  Thurnus, at the feast, stood up. He lifted a goblet of paga. Tup Ladletender," said he, "by the rite of the claws of sleen, is my brother. I lift my cup to him. Let us drink!" The villagers drank. Tup Ladletender rose to his feet. "You have shared with me tonight your paga and your kettle," said he. "I drink to the hospitality of Tabuk's Ford." There was a cheer. The villagers, and Thurnus, and Ladletender, drank. "And, too, this night," said Ladletender, "I drink to one with whom I do not share caste but that which is stronger than caste, the blood of brotherhood, Thurnus, he of Tabuk's Ford." There was another cheer. The villagers, all, drank. Thurnus stood up again. "I ask this free woman," said he, indicating Sandal Thong, "for whom I muchly care, to accept me in free companionship." There was a great cry of pleasure from the villagers.

  "But Thurnus," said she, "as I am now free do I not have. the right to refuse?"

  "True," said Thurnus, puzzled.

  "Then, noble Thurnus," said she, evenly, calmly, "I do refuse. I will not be your companion."

  Thurnus lowered the cup of paga. There was silence in the clearing.

  Sandal Thong gently lowered herself to the ground, and lay on her belly before Thurnus. She took his right ankle in her hands and, holding it, pressed her lips softly down upon his foot, kissing it. She lifted her head, tears in her eyes. "Let me be instead your slave," she said,

  "I offer you companionship," he said.

  "I beg slavery," she said.

  "Why?" he asked.

  "I have been in your arms, Thurnus," she said. "In your arms I can be only a slave."

  "I do not understand," he said.

  "I would dishonor you," she said. "In your arms I can behave only as a slave."

  "I see," said he, caste leader of Tabuk's Ford.

  "The love I bear you, Thurnus," she said, "is not the love of a free companion, but a hopeless slave girl's love, a love so deep and rich that she who bears it can be only her man's slave."

  "Serve me paga," said Thurnus. He handed the goblet to Sandal Thong.

  She took it and knelt before him, head down, proffering him the goblet. Though she was free, she served as a slave. Villagers gasped. Free women cried out, scandalized.

  Thurnus set aside the cup.

  "Have rope brought, and collar me, Thurnus," she said. "I am yours."

  "Bring rope," said Thurnus.

  Rope was brought.

  Thurnus took the rope, and regarded the girl.

  She looked up at him.

  "Collar me," she said.

  "If I collar you," he said, "you are again a slave."

  "Collar me, Master," she said.

  Thurnus wrapped the rope twice about her throat, and knotted it.

  Sandal Thong knelt before him, his slave. He seized her in his mighty arms and crushed her to him, raping her lips with the master's kiss, mighty in its lust and possession of the collared she, and she clutched him, helplessly, crying out. Her head was back, her lips were parted. He had begun to tear the tunic from her with his teeth. "Carry me from the light of the fire, Master," she begged. "But you are a slave," he laughed. He tore the garment from her and threw her between the feast fires. She looked up at him, her eyes wild with the passion-submission of the eager slave girl. "As master wills I" she cried, throwing her head and hair back in the dirt. He leaped to her and, between the feast fires, did lengthy ravishment upon her. Her cries must have carried beyond the palisaded walls.

  When he returned to his place at the feast she crawled to his feet, his slave, and lay there, daring sometimes to touch him delicately on the thigh or knee with her fingers.

  The feast continued late.

  The clouds gathered further in the sky, and I smelled moisture. The moons were darkened by the skudding billows of vapor.

  I think that I may have fallen asleep by the rack, from my exhaustion and the pain of the beatings and rapings that I had endured.

  But it was still dark when I awakened. I awakened to the clear snap of slave bracelets on my wrists. I looked up. I looked into the eyes of Tup Ladletender. I regarded my wrists. They were confined in inflexible steel. "Get up," said he, "little vulo." I struggled to my feet. I stood there, my wrists closely cuffed before me, not more than an inch apart. "You are mine now, little vulo," he said.

  "Master?" I asked.

  "Yes," he said. "You are mine now."

  "Yes, Master," I said.

  I felt very strange. So simply had I changed hands.

  I looked about. The feast had finished, and most of the villagers had returned to their homes. Some lay about, near the embers of the fires.

  We stood near the rack on w
hich the new slave, she who had been the free woman, Melina, lay captive. Thurnus was nearby, and Sandal Thong, and Radish, Verr Tail and Turnip.

  "I name you Melina," said Thurnus to the confined slave.

  "Yes, Master," she said. He had much shamed her by giving her in slavery the name she had borne as a free woman. She wore it now as the cognomen of a slave.

  "May a slave speak?" she asked.

  "Yes," said Thurnus.

  "Why have you had my head shaved?" she asked.

  "To return you as a shamed slave to the village of your father," said he.

  "Please keep me, Master," she said.

  "Why?" he asked.

  "That I may please you," she whispered.

  "Strange words from one such as you," he scoffed.

  "I beg to be kept to please my master," she said.

  "Have you been bereft of your wits by the brand," inquired Thurnus.

  "I only wanted to be the companion of a district leader," she said.

  "You are now anyone's slave to whom I give or sell you," he said.

  "Yes, Master," she said.

  "I did not move to become district leader," said Thurnus, "for it was your urging and intent that I do so. Had I sought the position it would have seemed to all that I did so for your ambition and to avoid the lashing of your tongue."

  She squirmed on the rape-rack, confined by the beams, in misery.

  "In a man's own hut," said he, "he must be master, even though he has selected out for himself a companion. It is the part of his companion to befriend and aid him, not to insult and drive him."

  "I was a poor companion," she whispered. "I will try to be a better slave."

  "If I choose to seek the leadership of the district," said Thurnus, "I will do so. If I do not wish to do so, I will not."

  "As Master wishes," said Melina, the slave.

  "You knew little of the matters of being a companion," said Thurnus.

  "I will study more diligently the matters of being a slave," said Melina.

  "You will begin in the morning, when you are publicly whipped," he said.

  "Yes, Master," she said.

  He put his hand on her body.

  "At one time you cared for me," she said.

  "Yes," he said, "that is true."

  "Do you find my body of interest, Master?" she asked.

  "Yes," said Thurnus.

  "And I am strong," she said. "I can pull a plow by myself."

  Thurnus smiled.

  "Keep me, Master," she begged.

  "Why?" he asked.

  "I love you," she said.

  "You know the penalties for lying?" he asked.

  "I do not lie, Master," she said. "I do love you." One of the penalties which may in a peasant village be inflicted upon a lying slave girl is to throw her alive to hungry sleen. I had little doubt but what Thurnus might do this if he caught one of his girls in a lie.

  "How can that be?" asked Thurnus.

  "I do not know," she whispered. "It is a strange, helpless feeling. I have lain here in the stocks. I have thought much."

  "Tomorrow," said Thurnus, "you will have less time to think, and more time to work."

  "Long ago I loved you," she said, "but as a free woman. Then, for years I did not love you, but despised you. Now again, after long years, I feel love for you, only now it is the shameful, helpless love of a bond girl for her master."

  "In the morning you will be whipped," said Thurnus.

  "Yes, Master," she said. She looked up at him. "You are strong," she said, "and masterful. You are a great man, whether you are a district leader or not. My freedom blinded me to your manhood and your worth. I saw you not for the things you were but for the things you might, enhancing my own person, become. I saw you not as a man but as an instrument of my own perceptions and ambitions. I regret that I did not, in my companionship, relish and celebrate what you were, rather than an image of what you might become. I never truly knew you. I knew only the image of my own invention. I never truly looked at you. Had I done so, I might have seen you."

  "You were always a shrewd, clever woman," said Thurnus.

  There were tears in her eyes. "I love you," she said.

  "I am putting you out into the village as village slave," he said.

  "Yes. Master," she said.

  "At night you will be confined in a sleen cage. During the `clay you will feed on what men will throw you. Each day you will serve a different hut in the village."

  "Yes, Master," she said.

  He looked down at her.

  "May I speak?" she asked. "Yes," he said.

  "May I not, too, sometimes serve my master?" she asked.

  "Perhaps," said Thurnus. He made as though to turn away.

  "Please, Master," said Melina.

  He turned to face her.

  "Please touch your slave," she said.

  "It is long since you have asked my touch," said Thurnus, regarding her.

  "I beg it, Master," she whispered. She lifted her body in the stock. "I beg it!"

  We turned away as Thurnus, swiftly and brutally, raped the slave girl in the stock.

  When he had finished with her she lay gasping, half shattered in the stock. "Oh, Master!" she cried. "Master," she whispered.

  "Be silent, Slave," said Thurnus.

  "Yes, Master," she said, and the girl in the sleen collar was silent.

  I looked upon her. I suspected that never had Thurnus wed her with such authority and force. Years ago, doubtless, she had been loved with the gentle tenderness accorded to free women. This was the first time in her life, I suspected, that she had felt the uncompromising, unbridled lust that may be vented on the helpless body of a female slave. Never before had she had an experience like this. Never before had she been so had. She looked after Thurnus, startled, confused, awe-struck, bewildered, enraptured. I saw she wanted to cry out to him, to beg him to return to her, but she dared not, for she was under discipline. Morning would be time enough for her to be whipped.

  Thurnus drew his tunic about him. He looked at me. Under the eyes of a free man, I knelt.

  "I have given you to Tup Ladletender," he said.

  "Yes, Master," I said.

  "He was promised you, in payment for the powder he gave to one in the village," said Thurnus. "The powder was used, though it did not have the effect that one in the village had intended. Accordingly, on behalf of one who was of the village, who can no longer transact the affairs of business, having fallen into the unfortunate state of slavery, I, on behalf of that person, tender you to him in payment for the powder."

  "Yes, Master," I said. My fists clenched in the slave bracelets. I was tendered in payment for a small, worthless powder. I grew angry. Surely I was at least a few copper tarsks' worth of slave girl. "But the powder was worthless," I pouted.

  "But so, too, are you, pretty little Dina," said Thurnus. He threw back his head and laughed.

  "Yes, Master," I said, angrily.

  He turned to Sandal Thong. "I pronounce you my preferred slave," said he. "You will sleep in my hut, and tend it."

  "A slave is grateful," said she, "Master."

  "Too," said he, "you are first girl."

  "As Master wishes," she said.

  Radish, Verr Tail and Turnip fled to her, hugging her and kissing her. "We are so happy for you," said Turnip.

  "I am first girl," said Sandal Thong.

  "I am so happy for you," said Radish.

  "Fetch a switch," said Sandal Thong.

  "Sandal Thong?" asked Radish, stunned.

  "Fetch a switch," said Sandal Thong.

  "Yes, Mistress," said Radish, hurrying away.

  In a few moments Radish returned, carrying a switch, which she placed in the hands of Sandal Thong.

  "Kneel," said Sandal Thong to the three girls. They knelt.

  "In a straight line, four horts apart, facing the master," she said. She dressed their line. "Straight," she said. She kicked back Radish's knees. "Backs straigh
t, hands on thighs, bellies sucked in, heads high," she sad. She tapped Verr Tail on the belly with her switch. Verr Tail sucked her belly in, tight. She tapped Turnip twice under the chin. Turnip lifted her chin. In their eyes I could read their distress. But they knelt beautifully under Sandal Thong's discipline.